THE growing awareness and increasing political consciousness of the average electorate have, in recent times, brought untold pressure on the political class – who before now, carried on as though it was sacrilegious to be accountable to the Nigerian people – and have made them concede to demands they know full well what the burden of its implementation was going to look like eventually.
But in a bid to stay on in power, the gravity of those hasty concessions looks like it mattered less (especially to the people) even when it should be subjected to scrutiny by no less a personality than the electorate. The concessions to the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) by the Federal Government are hasty. I say this for a number of reasons, chief of which are the coming elections.
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By hasty, I do not mean to suggest that these concessions are not without adequate consultations, rather I mean to say that even though they are well-intended, they looked more like a bait to get something from the people than to give something. The next government after now has been saddled with the responsibility of following through with details of the agreement for the purpose of implementation.
Having said this and going forward from here, it is important we recall what the agreements contain, why governments of the past had shunned it and why this government had decided to sign it despite its inability to back many of its previous agreements with adequate funding. Simply put, the demands of both the NLC and the ASUU are about money. Call it adequate funding or pay rise if you wish.
It is worthy of note that our currency has been on life support following the failure of government to fix power, the rail lines, the refineries and lastly accede to demands for restructuring the federation.
The problem is that those who lead us lack the mental capacity to explore beyond known boundaries. To them, since Nigeria is blessed with fossil fuel then it should remain a member of OPEC and feed the citizen from proceeds of oil. But if they saw oil as a money-making machine that should generate needed funds with which to invade other territories in search of other money-making machines, the reverse should have been the case.
I believe that for previous governments to have shunned any form of commitment to the demands of ASUU, it must be because they lacked the funds to back up their commitment, unless there was a better explanation to it. Hence, acceding to demands that’ll only end up creating more troubles has never been the style of any responsible administration.
Also, do not conclude that whoever questioned the seriousness of this commitment was idle or against the APC. For the electorate, it is not yet Uhuru for those who think that the APC had done well by committing to sign the longstanding agreement with ASUU and NLC. If the commitment is not because of the elections, the only other way to test the genuineness is to watch what happens to that commitment after the elections, if the APC returns.
Ifeanyichukwu Mmoh, ifeanyi_mmoh@yahoo.com
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